Lookfar's Easter cruise

Taking advantage of some fine warm and settled weather I've taken Lookfar for several more outings. On my hand line I've caught several nice snapper for our dinner and netted 3 stingray so far, within sight of our house. Julie and I released the two larger rays (the largest at close to 2 meters in width) and kept a smaller one that became hopelessly tangled by its tail in our net.

Today and yesterday I sailed out into the harbour on a very light breeze to have it fill in both days to a nice 15 - 20 knot sea breeze over the space of a couple of hours.

The tide is at its mid day highest at the moment with 3.7 meters being the peak on the full moon. Ideal for an extended trip, exploring the tidal river estuaries close to our home. This time my destination was the Omania river entrance. I trolled a lure on both occasions though so far no strikes. I'm targeting Kahawai, a pelagic fish, similar to salmon in general proportion. These fish are common in our waters, they pursue the yellow eye and grey mullet that team in our waters. I stopped on an uninhabited stretch of coast where an inviting and very ancient Puriri (A variety of Teak) tree hangs out over the water.

I ate an apple, drank some water and watched a cluster of snow white, royal spoon bills precariously perched in a mangrove thicket, waiting out the high tide for another wading forage through the mudflat margins of the upper harbour. Interestingly the tree has some of it's tangled and gnarled root system exposed on the bank at the waters edge. There is an enormous deposit of cockle and oyster shells among layered blackened remains of hundreds of cooking fires and hammer stones. Generations of people have been attracted to this place, this tree, as I have.

















Here we are returning home on a stiffening south westerly breeze running flat off the wind. I'm grateful to Julie who looks out for me and thinks about thinks like taking pictures.

I know that this image is somewhat like an earlier one, the difference now is that I have a very functional rudder which makes down wind control so much easier.

I'm finding that the canoe rides easier flat down wind with a lee board down as the narrow hull is prone to setting up a nasty oscillating roll in some sea states.

I'm finding the size and handiness of this little boat suits me and our location almost perfectly. Lookfar sails so well that I can't think of any way to improve it.

Comparing this little boat to others that I have owned, I find myself visualising previous trips in various other small sail boats, stretched out in the bottom, amidships, main sheet in one hand, tiller in the other, head and shoulders just protruding above the gunwale. Although this little boat has a miniscule rig compared to a Finn or an OK dinghy, the sensation of stealth and efficiency is no different. Lookfar is certainly very quick for its size, both upwind and down. I'm most mindful that I'm sailing in a tiny viking long ship.

Harmen.
Easter 2012

Lookfar's new rudder

I purchased a new rudder for my canoe project from our on line auction site.
It was listed as a brand new, unused, 30 year old, laser rudder, just what I wanted!

Pictures say it best:





















I had to modify the anodized aluminium cheeks by cutting away a section from the leading edge under the upper pintle to allow for clearance of the cast nose molding of the canoe.


















I cut 30mm off the Coleman, cast aluminium, nose molding to allow the closest possible fulcrum point to the stern of the canoe. I then drilled a perpendicular hole one oversize from the pintle pin. The hole drilled to one side is for the control line that keeps tension on the rudder blade in the down position. The line is secured by a cleat forward, close to my sitting position, on the gunwale.

















The lower Gudgeon is from a wrecked rudder off my old X Class yacht from the 1960's, from my "just in case it might come in handy one day" box. As you can see I bent the cheek plates around to the shape of the canoe stern. I bolted the assembly with 1/4" stainless steel machine screws, washers and nuts to the Ram X plastic hull. I shaped a pine block to fill the void created by the offset, female, gudgeon flukes. The black compound you see is a polyurethane "dubbin" adhesive used by the car industry to glue in car windshields, it's the toughest, meanest adhesive/sealant known to man.

















The lovely mahogany tiller is from an old P Class yacht which I kept from a restoration project on my son Robert's 3rd sail boat in the 1990's ( again from the same "handy" source). The tiller did not fit perfectly into the rudder head stock to begin with so some slight modification was needed for it to fit snugly.

















The tiller extension is from a window cleaners, telescopic extension handle.
I connected it to the tiller with a small stainless steel swivel, one end of which I bent out flat to create a saddle to bolt the assembly on to the underside of the tiller. This keeps the extension tube low, under the up sweeping curve of the tiller.
The cheek plate on the extension tube is cut from one side of a spinnaker pole fitting from a small sail boat, just the right diameter dish section to allow bolting to the side of the tube.

















The tiller is secured in place with a stainless steel locating pin drilled to fit through both the folded stainless steel cap of the tiller stock and the tiller itself. I always retain small items like these with a little lanyard so as not to loose them.

How does it handle you ask?

I launched Lookfar last night on the high tide. There was a 6 knot southerly, I sheeted in the tiny sail, dipped the starboard lee board, pulled on the rudder blade control line and the little canoe came alive, perfectly balanced, a delight to sail.
The rudder has transformed the handling of this little sailboat. Upwind no rudder is needed but downwind the hull wants to wander so the rudder helps to make the hull track straight. The new rudder makes a big difference to tacking and gibing control as well.
My old friend Mitchell says of my Lookfar project, "It's funny how the simplest, cheapest, smallest, closest to the water boats often provide the best boating." He should know, he showed me how!

Thanks for reading my blog.

Harmen